I'm pretty against capital punishment in general, so take that for what it is, but executing someone for something they did when they were eighteen really bothers me.
I've never been a violent person but I do know that I was even more of an idiot then than I am now.
She lured a classmate into the woods, slit her throat with a box cutter after torturing her for half an hour, bashed her skull open with a rock for good measure, then brought a piece of her skull to school the next day.
> I was even more of an idiot then than I am now
Do you think the above should be chalked up as normal childhood indiscretion?
I didn't say there shouldn't be consequences. I just think that executing someone who committed a crime when they were effectively a child is kind of upsetting. I do not see how you extrapolated that I think it's "normal childhood indiscretion" out of what I said.
• Vote
• Fight in the military
• Act in pornography
• Rent a car in MI, NY, QC
• Many other adult things
The crime perpetrated was premeditated and particularly demonic. It's a far cry from shoplifting a Snickers bar.
> is kind of upsetting
Bringing a chunk of the victim's skull to school to show your friends how good you are at murdering was probably pretty upsetting to a few people, like the victim's family and friends.
In the US you have a right to appeal your sentence, which is a good thing. If the government is going to be killing people, we want to (at the very least) make sure they have dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”. You have to pay someone to read these appeals, typically an attorney or multiple attorneys and/or a judge. There can be a backlog so it can take awhile to get through all of them.
This is inherent to how capital punishment works in the US, and anything less would be borderline tyranny, so I reject your framing of it as “aberration or some dumb policy”.
At the end of the day, the death penalty's only possible justification is retribution. It does not deter crime and incapacitation of the criminal can already be achieved by locking them up. Your logic presupposes that "an eye for an eye" is a legitimate philosophy for a modern State to hold, which is reprehensible.
There are a billion potential reasons for this, but it doesn’t appear to be that people have started dawning costumes and LARPing as the Punisher in large numbers.
> society needs to feel that the state executes justice
> People largely feel a greater trust in the state and a greater sense of justice and peace of mind when heinous criminals are killed
> people feel that justice is not being done
(and again)
> people feel that justice is not being done
They’re not going to give anybody a rational argument here because
> I guess you could call it vibes sure
It’s like asking somebody to justify why they’re really into ABDL stuff. The important part is that they just are, and won’t be talked out of it.
In brief, it doesn't matter what "is best" in some utilitarian framework if the democracy is not attuned to that framework. It doesn't matter if the death penalty actually increases crime. What matters is that the government should be doing what the people want it to be doing. If the people really want to kill criminals, any system that prevents that is non-democratic.
Can you elaborate on this? How does cultural homogeneity relate to the State being able to ditch retributive principles?
> When heinous criminals get to live out their days, people feel that justice is not being done, breeding vigilantes and unrest. Especially when they get released early, but even if they are never released.
That just seems like a problem for education, no? If people are told by their teachers and other figures of authority that retribution isn't good, that should be enough. Again that's how the Nordics do it and it seems to be working out for them.
I think we are at a fundamental disagreement though; I think it should be expensive and difficult to execute someone. I think the slow appeals process is a good thing. It should hard for the government to kill people who aren’t a direct threat.
I don’t know your politics but it doesn’t matter the specifics. Imagine whichever politician that you think is most stupid and tyrannical. Do you really want to give them the ability to rapidly kill people they don’t like without at least some bureaucratic checks in place?
* In the sense that society needs to feel that the state executes justice and that such people are not being kept alive on their own dime. That breeds contempt for the system and for the state.
The jury system of the US is a good system but it’s certainly not immune to mob mentality. It’s certainly not immune to appeals to emotion. It’s certainly not immune to any number of the things that make humans human. This is partly why we have an appeals process. If we are going to put someone to death, I think it’s better for them to be given every single avenue possible to prove their innocence so that we aren’t murdering someone innocent.
People who are a risk to normal society do need to be separated, and for that I am willing to not be 100% sure (though with plenty of chances for appeals). If we lock up someone for a crime they didn’t commit, we at least have the option to release them and potentially pay out some kind of financial settlement as a means of punishing the state for their mistakes. If you kill someone, there’s not really much of an opportunity to even try and make it right.
I appreciate this rephrasing of “I want the state to murder people because I enjoy that sort of thing”
I would ask if you think that the ~200 death row inmates that been exonerated of their convictions should be alive but uh you already answered that, unprompted
> nothing but swift death
“I want these people murdered because of a reason in my head, but even if the reason in my head weren’t true I’d still want to see them murdered” lmao I know it’s 2026 and it’s considered rude to kink shame but c’mon
The death penalty is supported by over half of the US population; any argumentative style that attempts to belittle or mock as niche this position in a form of appeal to consensus only works in certain bubbles. Your position is the more unpopular one, lmao.
Even now, though, in every state in the US, you're not a full adult when you're eighteen. You're not allowed to buy alcohol until you're 21. In a lot of states you're not allowed to buy cigarettes. We've decided that, despite being "grown ups", they're still not grown up enough to be trusted with these things.
To be clear, I'm perfectly fine throwing her in prison for the rest of her life without parole, like she would be had she committed the crime in a state without capital punishment like NY. I'm just particularly turned off by the death penalty. I can sit here and wax philosophical as to why but I'm sure you've heard the arguments and it would be a tangent.
I don't want my taxes going to private prison companies for the rest of her life.
I also don't want to see or hear about executions with whatever methods, it's revolting, but then again, public executions in Europe stopped like what, less than 200 years ago? And the public craved it.
Fun fact, France practiced guillotining through 1977.
There is no middle ground.
I think you have it backwards: "They" didn't have any trouble sending 18 year old that couldn't vote to fight in Vietnam. It was those 18 year olds who demanded a greater say in the political process because that was being demanded of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-sixth_Amendment_to_the_...:
> This means young men could be required to fight and possibly die for their nation in wartime at 18. However, these same citizens could not have a legal say in the government's decision to wage that war until the age of 21. A youth rights movement emerged in response, calling for a similarly reduced voting age. A common slogan of proponents of lowering the voting age stated "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote".
Also, according to that article, there were efforts before 1971 to lower the voting age, they just couldn't pass the very high constitutional amendment bar.
You don’t suddenly become a different person on your 18th birthday.
18 is not a child. Hell even 14 is not a child. Whether it is her fault or her upbringing, it doesn't matter: things that can't belong in our societies need to be removed.
My opinion, of course.
To be sure, there are crimes so heinous that the perpetrator can no longer be allowed to roam freely in society. You might even believe that, from a moral standpoint, they have forfeited their own right to life. But you still don't give the state the power to take it.
There are plenty of arguments for why you should not allow this, but, just an obvious one, in doing so you also give the state the right to take yours.
I’m not a complete bleeding heart here; I am not going to pretend that the world is a worse place because we killed Ted Bundy. He was an awful human who you could make a pretty good argument for deserving to die. I just find the idea that the state is killing people pretty bad.
Or I would just do what the UK did and stop capital punishment since I think it’s wrong.